A latest ballot by the Los Angeles Instances discovered that almost a 3rd of People assume California is “probably not American.” The ballot additionally discovered that 21% of individuals residing in California don’t assume that California is “actually American.”
However what counts as “actually American”? And for that matter, what’s California?
California entered the Union earlier than the Civil Struggle, previous to Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas. California can be essentially the most populous and probably the most various states within the union. Roughly one-eighth of the U.S. inhabitants lives right here. The state was dwelling to American presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
When individuals recommend that California will not be actually America, we would wonder if they’ve been beguiled by some mythic imaginative and prescient of America. Maybe they assume there may be an American heartland someplace on the market in Kansas or Nebraska. Perhaps they fantasize a few household farm in Iowa or some small New England village.
In that unusual American delusion, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and Fresno’s agricultural wonderland don’t rely as actually American. However most People fortunately devour our movies, know-how and agricultural merchandise.
Behind this unusual ballot query is a deeper query about what we take to be the essence of a rustic, or a state. That is actually a nonsensical query. Nations and states don’t have essences. They’re complicated and consistently altering compilations of individuals and geography.
We have to overcome our tendency to assume that there’s some important factor that counts because the spirit or substance of a nation. This can be a slim means of understanding the world. It’s used to kind individuals into us-vs-them. It’s harmful and divisive.
One treatment for this slim mind-set is to get out and discover the world. I’m penning this from a convention in New Orleans. Within the cab from the airport, the motive force was listening to a information program in French. New Orleans has Spanish and French heritage. Earlier than the Civil Struggle it was a middle of the slave commerce. Is New Orleans someway extra American than Los Angeles or Fresno?
Within the metropolis’s previous French Quarter, I noticed a quote in a bar from Tennessee Williams: “There are solely three nice cities in america: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. All the remainder are Cleveland.”
San Francisco, New Orleans and New York are wonderful locations. Cleveland can be fascinating. After I visited Cleveland final yr, I discovered magnificence on the shores of Lake Erie. And I spent a number of fascinating hours touring the Rock ‘n’ Roll Corridor of Fame.
We’d assume that nothing is extra American than rock ‘n’ roll. However rock music was born in New Orleans, the place African and Caribbean rhythms advanced into jazz, and rhythm and blues. In the meantime up in Cleveland, a D.J. named Alan Freed coined the time period “rock ‘n’ roll” within the Nineteen Fifties. After which got here the California bands and artists who performed key roles in rock historical past.
If you journey, you uncover that every American metropolis is exclusive. No state, metropolis, or area represents the essence of the nation. Because the bits and items of this nice large gumbo of a rustic come collectively, new and shocking issues are created.
The US consists of the deserts and canyons of Arizona, the mountains of Appalachia, and the bayous of Louisiana. It’s California’s coastal megacities, the blooming orchards of California’s Central Valley, and the majesty of Yosemite. It additionally consists of the economic rust belt of the higher Midwest and the cowboy swagger of Texas. This nation will not be a single factor. Certainly, the identify tells us that it’s a union of various states. Range is woven into the very coronary heart of the nation, which was created by various states becoming a member of collectively to kind a union.
However some individuals insist on speaking concerning the “homeland” and the “heartland.” A sort of warped nostalgia is intent on preserving some misplaced or forgotten American heritage. However we would rightly ask what slim slice of historical past and geography (or race, class, and faith) these people need to protect? And we must keep in mind that this nice nation is simply too large for that slim mind-set.
